Hendricks drops in 27 for Bay Port in win - The Press-Times

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Severe car crash in RT 82. Police at the scene - FOX 61

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Be very careful of the hype around top rated Vintage Port - CapeGazette.com

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RIP Henry Aaron. Mr. Aaron was a champion for human rights, a generous donator, and from all reports an unimpeachable gentleman. 2020 has cost us 10 former Hall of Fame players. Hammering Hank was a baseball GOAT. 

The February issue of Wine Spectator is worth buying. It has over 500 wines rated 90 points. Most can be had under $25, a valuable tool for those who wish to increase the scope of their wine menu without placing too much at risk. I prefer not to tout other reviewers, but in this particular case, I would be remiss in my obligation to inform. 

Let’s explore Vintage Port. First a brief tutorial. Unlike most other wine, a Vintage Port is not produced every year. This designation is decided by a producer choosing to “declare a vintage” because they consider the wine which were produced in a given harvest year meet the criteria. The regulating body for the Port trade, IVDP, evaluates a sample of the wine. If it approves the producer’s decision, the wine can be bottled, following specific criteria, then sold as Vintage Port. These are specific to a particular producer and does not reach across the entire production of any vintage year. History tells us that most producers are extremely careful with their “Declarations.” Most declare 3, or occasionally 4, per decade. Those who wish to read the broad brush can go here: https://vintageportsite.com/about-vintage-port/declaration-of-a-vintage. As a point of general information, the following Taylor Fladgate vintages are considered generally excellent: 1994, 96 McD under $200; 2000, 2003, 2007, 96 McD, under $80; ready 2027, 2011, 2016 and 2017. Of these, 1992, best, and ‘94 are ready to drink and still available around $225. Those who want to cellar look for the 2017, but be advised you get little price appreciation until the 20-year window, in most cases. Note the price on 2007 opposed to 1994. 

 Be very careful of the hype around top rated Vintage Port. Almost without exception, after great flack, they are initially way overpriced. As an example, the highly touted 2017 came in at $83 then rose to a high of $203 in November, 2017, dropped to $75 by June, 2019 and resides at $98 in December, 2020, where it is a very fair value. There are no deals on cases yet. Too many bought the hype. Most are selling around $1300/12. As a point of interest according to Roger Voss, a Port but not portly winophile, the last time there were two generally declared Vintage Ports was 1872-73 by 16 producers. By comparison, ‘63 and ‘71 respectively declared in 2016-17. And the good news keeps on coming as 2018 is looking like an unheard of three-year Port hat trick. Symington, owner of Graham’s, Dow’s, Warre’s and Cockburn, declared  six single quintas (country villa or estate, Spain) in 2018; Ferreira 100 points Voss;  Sogrape, which owns Sandeman, Offley and Ferriera, plus  Quinta do Vesuvio and Dow,Senoria da Ribiera, also declared with others to follow. I’m guessing the patient purchaser will find some excellent bargains in 2016. Keep your eyes peeled.

The reviews on the 2016 were effusive. In the June 2018 Robb Report there was an article titled, “A sneak peek at the greatest Vintage Port of the Century”. These reviews drove prices through the roof. Croft Vt Port came in at $419, and by Jan 2017 was $83; current price $94.I’m not casting aspersions, just delivering a caveat. As 2018 rest on shelves, likely most of their prices will also decline. 

Big Buckaroos who enjoy Port will be aware of Quinto do Noval Nacional VT. Port. Through diligent search I located a “wrinkle in the force.” The perfect score 2003 under $900/bottle just entered its window. Those who move quickly can buy it under $700. The 2016 and ‘17 are priced $1,000 and need at least 12 in the cellar. Do not confuse with the Quinta do Noval Touriga Nacional  which, although they show a vintage on the label, aren’t declared wine. These consistently rate 90-91 McD are findable around $30-40 and are lovely. Quinta Noval Silval is another very fine look at Port for beginners. Try to find 2014 or earlier under $100.

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The best sex scene ever? The puppet copulation in Team America - The Irish Times

Keira Knightley has been making worthwhile arguments about sex scenes in movies. Speaking on the Chanel Connects podcast, she suggested she might never again shoot such a sequence for a male director. “I don’t have an absolute ban, but I kind of do with men,” she said. “I don’t want it to be those horrible sex scenes where you’re all greased up and everybody is grunting.”

There are two intertwined arguments here. The more serious addresses the potential for film-makers to misuse women on set. “I feel very uncomfortable now trying to portray the male gaze,” Knightley said. The second, more aesthetically inclined strand is to do with the perennial wretchedness of humping sequences in mainstream movies. The clutched sheets. The flickering candles. The screeching saxophones.

No, this is not to suggest sex scenes are “unnecessary” – the favourite adjective of prudes who like to pretend they are not prudes – or that the medium is inherently ill-suited to the carnal. It’s just that too many film-makers having been doing it wrong for too many decades.

The role of intimacy co-ordinators – hired to ensure that actors are comfortable in sex scenes – has increased 

Given what we now know – and should have always suspected – about the industry, no sane person will be raising an eyebrow at Knightley’s declaration. For decades, vulnerable actors have been bullied out of comfort zones. The most notorious example was the “butter incident” in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. Much misinformation has bubbled since the film opened in 1972. The rape scene between Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando was entirely “simulated”, but it seems the female star, then just 19, was deliberately kept unaware that butter would be used as a lubricant.

“I wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress,” Bertolucci said later. “I wanted her to react humiliated.” That sort of sexist manipulation was taken for granted.

More than 40 years later, Abdellatif Kechiche, director of Blue Is the Warmest Colour, was criticised for his behaviour on the set of that sexually explicit lesbian romance. “We wanted to give everything we have,” Adèle Exarchopoulos, co-star of the film, explained. “But sometimes there was a kind of manipulation, which was hard to handle.” When Léa Seydoux, who played Exarchopoulos’s lover, was asked if she would work with Kechiche again, she replied “never”.

Both actors continued to praise the film itself, but, by December of 2019, the winner of the 2013 Palme d’Or at Cannes had vanished from most critics’ “best of the decade” list.

Critical shift

The arrival of the #MeToo movement in 2017 accelerated that critical shift. In the succeeding years, the role of intimacy co-ordinators – hired to ensure that actors are comfortable in sex scenes – increased on film and TV sets. Ita O’Brien, who performed that task on Normal People, had been making the case for years. “Everything shifted on the dime, and everything that I was calling for then was welcomed,” she said about the #MeToo aftermath.

A scene from Normal People, the production of which featured input from an intimacy co-ordinator. Photograph: Enda Bowe

O’Brien’s work with directors Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald on the adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel helped create sex scenes charged with emotion, awkwardness and excitement. Far from constraining creativity, the new arrangements, by providing discernible limits, free film-makers from moral and creative tensions. They can feel more confident in depicting explicit acts. They no longer need to show fingernails digging suggestively into satin pillow cases. Fewer edits are required of trains powering into tunnels. No longer need anybody close the relevant scene with a montage of gushing oil wells.

Lord save us from the empty cardigan who tells us films were more erotic when directors were allowed to show only – to paraphrase Cole Porter – a glimpse of stocking. But, infuriating though it is to relate, that unavoidable bore is not entirely wrong. The sexual liberations of the 1960s were not total. Film-makers were still hemmed in by restrictions. The Old Chap could be seen in repose, but, away from speciality cinemas in Soho or Times Square, he was not permitted to stand proud.

You know the type of thing. The saxophones blared. Curtains billowed at the moment of completion. Hair was thrown back towards padded headboards. Even the much-praised sex scene in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now is layered with coyness: the pretty flute, the cuts to post-coital grooming. We have never fully escaped from audio-visual euphemism.

Team America: World Police - a rare occasion when film-makers got it right

The best sex scene ever might be the puppet copulation in Team America: World Police. All the cliches mentioned above – perfected in action cinema of the 1980s and 1990s – are employed as the couple clunk and clack their way towards varnished satisfaction. As a summation of every cinematic evasion about the sexual act it is close to perfect. The more explicit version on the DVD then (ahem) fills in the missing gaps.

We will never entirely escape the coy, cheesy depiction of sexual intercourse referenced in Team America. Repression will be with us forever. But the arrival of intimacy co-ordinators and the work done in increasing awareness by troupers such as Keira Knightley may make the creation of such sequences safer for actors. We can hope.  

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First responders on scene of fire in northwest Roanoke - WFXRtv.com

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The 10 best – and weirdest – movie car jump scenes in history - Driving

In the real world, jumping cars almost always ends in tears, bent frames, and imploded suspension components, but in Hollywood it’s usually an excellent way to add an exclamation mark to a chase scene.

Hundreds of on-screen pursuits have give their stunt drivers the chance to get just a little  airborne, and there are a handful out there cool enough – or is that weird enough? – to be singled out for a little extra recognition.

Here’s our take on the most impressive, and occasionally also the strangest, automotive flight plans ever captured on film.

The Transporter (2002)

The Car: 1995 BMW 735i

The Stunt: Jason Statham jumps from an overpass onto a moving car carrier

Why It’s So Cool: The most compelling aspect of the car stunts in The Transporter have to do with just how big the E38 BMW that Jason Statham’s character wheels around truly is. The 7 Series’ girth is further accented by the tiny European streets that frame the movie’s opening bank robbery escape scene, which means it’s only logical that the most impressive aspect of the sequence is also about forcing big things into tiny places.

With the rear wheels spinning and his mental timer ticking, Statham launches the 735i off a tiny overpass and lands it in the only free space available on the moving car carrier below. Thus, the Transporter is transported, and the audience has been clued in to what kind of thrills they can expect from the remainder of the movie.

The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

The Car: 1974 AMC Hornet X

The Stunt: A corkscrew jump across a river in a truly terrible car

Why It’s So Cool Weird: First things first: they actually executed a full barrel-roll jump in perhaps the least-suited automobile for such a stunt one could find in 1974. The victim of a product placement deal with AMC, James Bond’s producers apparently decided to torpedo the cool factor of the amazing, no-camera-trickery corkscrew (executed by stunt driver Loren ‘Bumps’ Williams) by dubbing over a slide-whistle sound effect that gave the entire effort the gravitas of a Looney Tunes production.

We’re still waiting for the Alfred R. Broccoli Special Edition version of The Man With The Golden Gun that gets all George Lucas in its revisions to what should have been a celebrated scene rather than a moment of ridicule.

The Rookie (1990)

The Car: 1990 Mercedes-Benz 500 SL

The Stunt: Top-down Clint Eastwood blasts through a wall of windows while jumping a Mercedes-Benz roadster from the upper storey of an exploding warehouse onto the rooftop of another building, before crashing through a skylight

Why It’s So Cool: Everything about the sentence you just read above this explains why this jump is cool, but it’s worth pointing out The Rookie was all about stretching the limits of an audience’s suspension of disbelief, especially regarding the imperviousness of the two leads to gunfire. Eastwood and his partner (played by Charlie Sheen) are completely unscathed by their multi-glass smash, and Clint even gets to drop the forgotten Mercedes-Benz tagline ‘Engineered like no other car’ as they pick themselves up out of the wreckage.

Speed (1994)

The Car: 1966 GMC TDH 5303

The Stunt: A city bus jumps from one portion of an incomplete highway to another with Sandra Bullock at the wheel

Why It’s So Cool: Depending on who you believe, the bus hump from Speed was either a resounding success or a barely-contained tragedy. Although there was no danger of the GMC hauler falling into a death-chasm (that section of highway was actually in place, and was digitally-removed in post-production), the stunt coordinator had underestimated just how well the bus would take to the sky.

At its highest arc the front of the TDH 5303 reached 20 feet from the road surface, and it managed to clear a full 109 feet in the air. This wreaked havoc with camera placement (parts of the bus weren’t even in frame), and the design of the 15-degree ramp (where the front ‘kicker’ portion dropped flat as soon as the front wheels cleared it) gave the bus a bit of a ‘747’ landing profile, but it remains an unforgettable capsule of ’90s cinema.

Taxi (1998)

The Car(s): A pair of 1992 Mercedes-Benz 500Es

The Stunt: The two Benzes are tricked into jumping from one section of an incomplete elevated roadway to another, stranding a gang of bank robbers

Why It’s So Cool: The second ‘Oops, there’s a gap in the highway’ stunt on our list stands as the thrilling conclusion to a chase between a hopped-up Peugeot driven by the film’s anti-hero and a bunch of bad dudes through much of Marseille and the surrounding countryside.

By braking at the last moment, the Peugeot driver (played by Samy Nacieri) manages to maroon the not-so-lucky 500E sedans on a hundred-foot segment of sky-high asphalt, where they can be later retrieved by police helicopter. It’s an inspired bit of direction from Gérard Pirès in a pioneering French movie that stood apart from other action fare from the same decade.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

The Car: 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California

The Stunt: A glorious ode to the freedom of valets set to the Star Wars soundtrack, and a second plunge to doom by a replica of the very same car later in the film

Why It’s So Cool: John Hughes decided to make real every single sports car owner’s fears about the habits of out-of-sight valets when he had a pair of carefree Chicago parkers go on a fantasy tear around town in Bueller’s best friend Cameron’s dad’s 250 GT California (which included more than a little air time).

A few story beats later, while trying to roll-back the car’s odometer on a jack, Cam kicks the Ferrari to death by knocking it, wheels spinning, through the glass wall of its ultra-bougie suburban garage. Two iconic jump scenes in one movie are just a part of what has made Ferris Bueller’s Day Off an indelible classic.

Gone In 60 Seconds (1974)

The Car: 1971 Ford Mustang (called a ’73 on-screen)

The Stunt: A 40-minute car chase culminates in a 128-foot jump after a 90-foot downhill plunge at full speed

Why It’s So Cool: Director and star H.B. Halicki did all of his own driving during the filming of one of the ’70s’ most unusual action films, and that means he was at the wheel when a 1971 Ford Mustang his character was driving got launched 30 feet into the air and landed nearly 130 feet later, compacting his own vertebrae but becoming even more of a legend in the process. Amazingly, only two cars were used while filming the chase and both survived the shoot, with the fully-caged jump car occasionally turning up in museums across the U.S.

Hooper (1978)

The Car: 1978 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am

The Stunt: That Trans Am? It has a rocket strapped to it, and it’s going to jump across a collapsed bridge — or is it?

Why It’s So Cool Weird: Yeah, yeah, so it does make the jump. But this is one of the stranger entries on our list, in that the jump takes place in a movie about an aging stuntman, that is directed by an actual stuntman, about a younger stuntman being pressured into doing a jump that’s way too dangerous because it involves a rocket engine attached to a Firebird. It’s like a meta-commentary how audiences are complicit in pushing film crews to take greater and greater risks to keep us all enterta — aw, c’mon, man just let me see that really sweet jump!

Speed Zone (1989)

The Car: 1985 Lamborghini Countach 5000 QV

The Stunt: A Countach is skipped across a pond like a flat stone

Why It’s So Cool: Every single auto enthusiast has, at one point in their life, looked at a body of water and thought ‘If I was going fast enough, I could definitely skip across this lake/river/pond/canal/deep ocean channel and just keep on driving when I hit the shore.’ And every single one of them has been wrong.

2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

The Car: 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Yenko

The Stunt: Jumping from shore to ship to crash into Cole Hauser’s fleeing yacht

Why It’s So Cool Weird: We didn’t really need a boat in this movie. It’s not called 2 Float 2 Furious. After a whole bunch of really fun driving stunts, having a street racing film climax with a Camaro launched into a flying bridge felt more than a little out of place.

It took no less than nine Camaros to make the stunt a reality, including one that was repeatedly dunked in the drink over and over by a tow cable to try and see how far it would actually launch from a pier, and then using a crane on a set to simulate the actual impact on the back half of a faux-yacht shot against a green screen. Dom probably could have done it in one take.

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Port: It's OK to be American, just don't draw a box around it - The Dickinson Press

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An important question as we watch our nation tear itself apart over cultural and political differences.

In Bismarck, Rep. Terry Jones, a member of the Bastiat Caucus, has introduced a bill requiring "American" as the first choice on any government form requesting racial information.

It's a stupid proposal. "American" is not a race. Not only would that option undermine the usefulness of the information being collected — racial data is important for everything from health to economic policy — but Americans are a very diverse group.

To be an American is to be, well, just about any race you could imagine.

This may surprise you, given how often our country is portrayed as the home of xenophobes and bigots, no country on Earth takes in more immigrants than the United States.

It's not even close. According to a 2019 report from the United Nations, America was home to 48.2 million immigrants.

Second on the list? Russia, with 11.6 million.

Our education institutions push a curriculum that is long on America's many faults and fumbles and short on its virtues and aspirations. With its left-wing bent and desire to appeal to foreign markets, the entertainment industry treats patriotism like something distasteful. There is a political movement, centered on the historically inaccurate 1619 Project published by The New York Times, which asks you to believe that slavery was and still is America's defining characteristic.

From that perspective, I can understand what Jones was trying to do in a very clumsy and tone-deaf manner.

Being an American is a great thing.

More than any other, our nation remains a destination for millions from every corner of the world who want to find opportunity and prosperity, and freedom.

Yet many busy themselves drawing a box around Americanism so they can claim it only for themselves. This attitude is the root of much of the anti-immigration sentiment the Trump movement was built on, but it's hardly a uniquely right wing point of view.

One of the less thoughtful responses I got after my recent interview with Fargo-based Black activist Wess Philome was from a person, apparently of Native American heritage, objecting to my use of the term "our country" in the interview.

"What do you mean 'our country' Port?" this person wrote. "Go back to Europe."

It's impossible for me to "go back" to a place I've never been to. None of us gets to choose where we are born. I was born in the United States, like most of you were.

But too many people want to define "American" as meaning only people who look like them.

It's a corrosive attitude.

Given our nation's long history of taking in immigrants, one might also say it's un-American.

To comment on this article, visit www.sayanythingblog.com

Rob Port, founder of SayAnythingBlog.com, is a Forum Communications commentator. Reach him on Twitter at @robport or via email at rport@forumcomm.com.

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